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Norway Will Make All Short-Haul Flights Electric By 2040 (independent.co.uk)
Norway's public operator of air transport plans to make all short-haul flights in the country entirely electric by 2040. "State-owned Avinor, which operates most of Norway's civil airports, is aiming to be the 'first in the world' to switch to electric air transport," reports The Independent. From the report: "We think that all flights lasting up to 1.5 hours can be flown by aircraft that are entirely electric," chief executive Dag Falk-Petersen told AFP. The announcement confirms Norway's reputation as a leader in electric power. In a 2017 report, Avinor announced that in cooperation with the Norwegian Sports Aviation Association and major airlines, it had set up a development project for electric aircraft. Avinor said it had "called for Norway to be established as a test arena and innovation center for the development of electric aircraft." Avinor intends to reduce aircraft greenhouse gas emissions in the short term by phasing in biofuels in the coming years, and then build on these reductions by phasing in electric planes.
I assume you're kidding. People have been flying electric light aircraft since 1997, when the Alisport Silent Club added an electric takeoff option. The fastest manned electric plane, the 330 LE, goes 340 kph. For the low-end consumer, you can get an Electraflyer-ULS for under $60k. While it has a 2 hour flight time, it's more like a powered glider, of course, with a very low cruising speed. For a bit more ($104k) you can get a 2-seater a Pipistrel Alpha Electro with a cruising speed of 200 kph and a range of 600km.
Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
The funny thing is, electric aircraft can regenerate on descent. If for some strange reason you "ran out of power" in the air, yes, you'd have to make an emergency landing, but it would be an emergency powered landing. Unlike the unpowered landing a combustion-powered aircraft landing has to make if it runs out of fuel.
Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
I don't, i think it's wildly optimistic.
The problem with switching an aircraft over to electric power involves a metric which isn't really that much of an issue with cars or boats - weight.
Batteries weigh the same at the start of the flight as they do at the end of the flight - so the aircraft has to carry more weight further.
It also has to land with that extra weight, each and every time.
So the airframe needs to be stronger, which inevitably means more weight.
In airline terms, weight is everything. Boeing and Airbus get to pat themselves on the back when they remove a single metric tonne of weight from an aircraft such as the 787 or A350, so when you take an aircraft such as an ATR-72 and tell it to fly around and land with an extra 1.5 tonnes of weight for it's entire lifespan, it's going to be an issue.
22 years to move to an all electric platform in a 1.5 hour sector goal is a huge ask, imho.
Chip hasn't exactly been active on that blog for a while. Did he ever regenerate more than 2%? The drag on this system would be tremendous. I think it would make a better speed brake than a power regeneration system. In my aircraft, I have to descend at least at a 6-degree angle (or greater) in order for the weight of the plane to drive the N1. And that's a mostly free turbine (it does turn an accessory box for hydraulic and electric). I can't imagine putting a heavy electric-generating load onto a propeller system and recovering enough energy to do more than 60-90 seconds of modest powered flight. Perhaps that would be enough to make that one final correction on landing, but if it's not enough to do a go-around, it's just not enough.
I don't know if this has been mentioned here by someone else, but somethings seems off about this news article. As a Norwegian I couldn't help to wonder where this story originated from, as I have seen nothing about this in norwegian newspapers. Slashdot links to the independent, that refers to an article by NRK on norwaytoday.info. This website does in fact not represent NRK. NRK uses their own NRK.no. The rapport from Avinor predicts that electric aircraft should be available from 2030, not that all Norwegian flight use them from 2040. This seems like a bad job by the journalists in siting sources, or just bad journalism.
Norway doesn't need domestic flights. She is a long and thin country, much like Japan. Similarly, Norway could be ideally served by one or two longitudinal very high-speed railway mainlines with short branches to serves rural destinations. Furthermore, Norway has a huge amount of hydro-electric power installed on their fjord waterfalls, an essentially free source of electrified railway traction. Considering Norway's rather extreme weather and very long artic winter nights, surface transport by rail is also more reliable and less risky than flying.
The problem is, Norway and neighbouring Sweden use an obsolete form of railway electrification, called fractional frequency supply. This scheme forces them to build a parallel national grid and/or install a lot of frequency-changing substations to provide 50/3 = ~16.7 Hz, 15kV AC electricity for the catenary, thereby excessive huge construction / expansion costs. (Note: a similar obsolete system for electric railway traction existed in small parts of the USA until early 1970s with ~ 11kV / 25Hz AC supply.)
To this day, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Germany haven't adopted the UIC world standard Kando-system, that is railway traction power taken directly from the national electric grid (50Hz AC in Europe) via simple, low-cost 120/25kV ZBD-type transformers. This germanic-nordic weakness is mercilessly exploited by the powerful air travel lobby, which is also supported by the military-industrial complex (namely EADS-Airbus in Europe) because aviation tech is considered useful for warfare, while railways are no longer appreciated by the general staff.
The above is chief reason why Norway is investing in un-nneded and un-tested electric domestic aviation, even though high-tension electric railways have been a daily reality in service since 1902 and high-speed rail has been mature since 1964.